True North (Compass series Book 4) (19 page)

I find a corner of the First Ladies Water Garden that’s not overrun by people and sit down on a half-wall. The sound and the flow of the fountain is soothing, and I let my eyes close, leaning back on my hands. I’ve got to let Tanaka and Albertson go, focus on the next batch, and hope I run into Gomez somewhere I can back him into a corner.

I’m plotting my next move when I sense someone coming too close. Cracking an eye open to see the person who clearly needs a tutorial on personal space, I’m surprised by a blonde in a bright white pants suit—a certain ex-wife of mine in very becoming Stella McCartney if I’m not mistaken.

“Mind if I join you?”

Extending a chivalrous hand, I shift so there’s plenty of room for her on the sun-warmed stone. “Please do. Pleasure to see you, Ms. Allwyn.”

She sits and bumps my shoulder with her own, and I’m tempted to turn her face toward mine for a kiss. But I’d barely had a chance to talk to her after we’d finished my initiation scene. A few words here and there, but people would always insist on dragging us into other conversations or offering us another drink. It would have been nice to debrief, but before I’d been able to get her alone, she’d had to go. Early meeting for work. I’d had one too. And it’s not like we were going back to the townhouse together—no, I’d gone back to my cold, empty house alone.

But here she is, a second chance. I’d like to be brave, but I need to start slow. “How are you?”

She tips her head and wrenches her pretty mouth. “Okay. The senator’s been running me ragged for the past few days.”

“Wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with a certain bill, would it?”

“Slade, don’t even go there.”

Her death glare silences me, and I raise my hands in surrender. If she doesn’t want to talk about work, we don’t have to, but a girl can’t blame me for trying. The cagey, livid look says this isn’t an innocent bit of teasing, though. It’s like she believes what she said to me: that I only want to use her to advance my own agenda. She narrows her eyes, making sure I’m not going to try to wheedle more information out of her, but I’ll be on my best behavior. I will do my utmost to convince her that wanting to spend time with her has nothing to do with her influence with the senator. After a few seconds of assessment, she decides I’m going to let it go without a fight and relaxes.

“He always keeps me busy, but everything’s at a fever pitch on the Hill. It doesn’t help that I was a little short on sleep the other night.”

A smile slips over her face, and she eyes me bashfully, bringing all the memories flooding back into my head. Pressly in black and silver, spanking her, having her suck me off, marking her with my climax, getting her off with my fingers inside her. Fuck all, cannot be getting hard in the middle of the First Ladies’ Water Garden. I mentally send regrets to Martha, Abigail, Dolley, and all the rest.
My apologies, ladies.

Press has got a pink glow in her cheeks, and I don’t think it’s from sitting in the sun. Maybe it’s her cheerful contentment that gives me the courage to ask what I’ve been wondering since Wednesday night.

“Why’d you do that anyway?”

“Do what?”

“You know what I mean.”

She blinks, and I swear the colors in her eyes swirl like I’m looking through a kaleidoscope. “I do.”

“So why?” I keep trying to figure out why she would’ve done that. Offered up her physical and mental health to me, the man who ruined her six years ago. What in heaven’s name made her think that was a good idea? If I weren’t so grateful, I’d scold her for it. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was amazing and I’m so thankful, but I don’t understand why you did it.”

She looks around, but no one is close enough to hear us, and then the corners of her mouth turn down, the way they used to when she was trying to work something out in her mind before she said it out loud. I’d always found it freaking adorable and newsflash: I still do.

“When we were…” Her voice falters, and her mouth tightens.

“Yeah.” I’m not going to make her say it out loud. Partly because it’ll hurt her, and partly because I don’t want to see the pain on her face when she does. Because
married
is a bad word to her, an institution that brings nothing but heartbreak.

“Once when I came by your office, you were in a meeting. You didn’t know I was there. And I heard you—yelling. You were dressing someone down for messing up a project that the firm had put hours and hours into, and it gave me the strangest feeling.”

She frowns and takes a deep breath, giving herself a minute to compose herself.

“On the one hand, it was awful. You didn’t sound like the man I’d married at all. Never had you talked to me like that. You’d always treated me with kid gloves, which I loved. I knew you could be uncomfortable and belligerent with other people, and it made me feel special that you were never like that with me.”

No, I never was. Not that she never irritated me, not that we never argued. But never, ever did I raise my voice to her. Had to lock myself in the bathroom to let my super-heated temper boil over so it wouldn’t burn her sometimes, sure, but I always kept a lid on it. Because what kind of monster yells at their sweet, doe-eyed wife? Not this kind.

“But when I heard you that day, it… This is so confusing. And messed up.”

She looks at me, and in her eyes, I can see the hope, the seeking of permission.
Tell me this is okay.

“Tell me, Press. There’s no way I’m going to think less of you.”

“When I heard you, it turned me on. I wanted you to talk to me like that. Yell and embarrass me. But I was also mad at you because you can’t talk to people like that.”

“I know.” I try not to make a face, because god, do I know. Rey’s hammered that through my thick skull at least. “And I’ve been much better at controlling my temper in the office. I promise. Rey said he’d salt and roast my nuts if I didn’t.”

That breaks the tension some and she smiles. But soon enough, her expression fades back into that uncomfortable uncertainty. “I went down on you in your office that day. Do you remember that?”

Do I? I couldn’t look at my desk she’d crouched under while she was sucking me off for months without getting horny, and it’s been the source material for innumerable wank sessions, so yes, I remember. “Yeah, I do. Fondly.”

“While I was doing that, I was picturing you yelling at me. Telling me I was dirty and disgusting and a disappointment. And I had a tone to paste the words to. I left feeling so sexy and buzzing with this new discovery. I thought when you got home, maybe I’d talk to you. Hint at some scenario that would make it less weird somehow. You know, student who’s failing her hot professor’s class? Maybe a secretary who made a hash of her boss’s calendar? Or a chambermaid who stole some silver?”

Her eyes are glowing. She’s getting distracted by those setups and so am I. Holy fuck. I interrupt, because if we want to get through this conversation without me throwing her to the stone tiles and shagging her raw right in front of all the tourists and the disapproving glares of former first ladies’ ghosts, we’d better get on with it.

“What happened that you didn’t?”

“You came home and you looked exhausted. Disillusioned even. At first I thought you’d been fired or dropped from a big case, but then you told me. You were angry with yourself because you’d lost your temper with one of your associates and you were embarrassed by it. Maybe even ashamed.”

She swallows and shakes her head, her blonde hair swishing around her shoulders with the movement.

“You clearly didn’t like that person you were when you’d lost your cool. And I felt guilty for wanting you to be that way. It felt so wrong that I got turned on by something you despised. And I never wanted you to be anyone you didn’t want to be. Heck, if you hadn’t been so ambitious, that would’ve been fine. I would’ve loved you no matter what. But I helped you learn things, how to talk to the right people and know the right things, because you desperately wanted to be that and I was supposed to be your helpmeet. What kind of loving spouse asks their partner to make themselves feel ill at ease for their own sick sexual gratification?”

My chest crumples like a beer can smashed against a frat boy’s forehead. Yeah, I know what that’s like. I hadn’t wanted to ask her either because her opinion of me mattered so much and I didn’t want to make her unhappy.

“So I couldn’t ask you for that. To say those things to me. To humiliate me. But when I got a second chance to make that fantasy come true, I took it. It scared me, but it was worth the risk. I wanted you to have that experience, and even though our marriage went up in smoke, I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. I trusted you not to.”

I want to confess it all—that the reason I drove her away was because I couldn’t share that part of myself with her. And despite Rey’s encouragement, and hers too, and everyone at the Black House for that matter, it still doesn’t sit easily with me. Not to mention that I’m so chickenshit I couldn’t even bare this part of myself to my wife who loved me and who, it turns out, would’ve been amenable. Something else I’m ashamed of.

So I keep that particular revelation to myself and swallow it down. Maybe someday I’ll find it in me to tell her that I’ve always loved her, that I want her back. But maybe it’s better to prove it. I’ll show her and hope to hell she comes to the same conclusion I have: we could have each other back and better than ever.

The sound of her voice shakes me out of my scheming. “I’d do it again, you know.”

“You would?”

She nods, her mouth pursing in a funny little smile. “Oh, yeah.”

I sit up a little straighter, and I can’t help the puff of my chest. I did a good job. She’d do it again. And doesn’t that make me feel good? Hell yeah, it does. I’m still basking in the warmth of her praise when her voice sounds again.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything you want to know.”

“Would you ever…”

I raise my brows expectantly and zero in on her. I can almost guarantee the answer will be yes.

“Would you ever want to involve other people?” She blanches at my blank expression and starts to backpedal. “We don’t have to. Or if we did, they could watch. Sometimes an audience, it—”

Her blush darkens, and yeah, I can see what even the mention of an audience does to her. And I fucking love it. “I would not be averse to that.” Naturally, by not averse, I mean that my dick is starting to swell against my zipper in a pretty uncomfortable way.

“Oh. Okay.”

But the more I turn it over in my head, the more I think I couldn’t handle that right now. The idea turns me on like nobody’s business, but the thought of having an audience when I’m so new and prone to fuck-ups makes me queasy with the potential for embarrassment.

“I don’t think I’d be ready for it the next time we play or any time soon, but it’s not because I don’t want to. I’d just be nervous. And self-conscious. It’s one thing to have Rey there, but other people? I wouldn’t want to be more focused on my own insecurities than I was on keeping you safe.”

I hate admitting that I’m lacking in some way and I brace myself for a look of disappointment to come over her face, but it doesn’t. Instead, she smiles and gets this hopeful, dreamy look in her eyes.

“That’s really mature of you, Slade. It makes me feel like you care. Like you get this and it’s important to you to get it right. I know that wasn’t easy for you to say, and I appreciate it.”

She leans over to kiss my cheek, and I almost pass out with happiness and pride. There’s some motherfucking growth right there, and I can practically see Rey Walter across the garden giving me an embarrassingly enthusiastic double thumbs-up.

*

I am so
totally fucked.

Brashear and Collins are hard nos. That not only sucks for the obvious reasons—and I fucking hate being told no—but it also endangers Sue Ellen McClane’s vote. Johnson’s become even more important than he was before, and that was pretty freaking important. And the jackass still isn’t giving me any clue what my odds are. I might find Pressly’s flirty indecision sexy and take it as a fun-to-conquer challenge, but this is not fun. I want it over and secured and now it’s essential. Fucking Johnson.

The only thing that might be good about this is maybe spending some more time in his office and getting to see Pressly at work. I do love that part. Getting to see her in real life. Outside the fantasy of the Black House. And maybe if I see her outside of the club enough, she’ll start to see the possibility that I have. That maybe the club isn’t all we could have.

We’ve scened a few times since the night of my initiation, and though it’s been wonderful, it still feels casual. An incredibly intense level of physical intimacy that seems to slip into the emotional, but when it’s over, it melts away. Like the whole thing is a mirage. And like a parched man in the desert, I keep chasing it. Because I want it back and, in the meantime, I’ll take whatever she’s willing to give me.

It’s been sneaking into my consciousness before I go to bed at night—the idea of having Press not just in the small, secret hours we have at the Black House, but out here too. Like we used to. What would it be like, to share our public and private lives? To be in on a kinky secret even as we parade around town like a power couple? Her as a senior staffer in Johnson’s office and me as…well, that’s something else I’d like to have her by my side for. Figuring out what exactly my life is going to look like in the next year after the election.